Review: Godzilla: King of monsters

Godzilla destroying Tokyo, Japan, the place where he was created and what the first Godzilla movie was based on. The fan art above is based on the 2016 movie “Godzilla Resurgence.” (Fanart by Noger Chen on Flickr)

“Godzilla King of the Monsters” was a highly anticipated sequel to “Godzilla (2014).” This movie is very enjoyable to watch but did get very slow at times.

This movie is about a family who lost their son from a Godzilla attack. Dr. Emma Russell, played by Vera Farmiga, dealt with the grief of losing her son by plunging herself into her work while her husband, Mark, played by Kyle Chandler, became an alcoholic. This resulted in Mark losing custody of his daughter, Maddy, played by Millie Bobby Brown, in a divorce. Emma and Maddy were staying at a house near a Monarch containment sight for one of the monsters. (Monarch is a private organization tasked with containing and destroying the monsters but are unable.) When the monster was unable to be contained the containment facility was raided by an eco-terrorist, Alan Jonah played by Charles Dance. Alan took Maddie and Emma hostage and took a machine called the Orca. The Orca is a machine designed to communicate with whales but it was repurposed to control the monsters. 

The first viewing of the movie was lots of fun and was a very enjoyable experience. However, the second go around the movie was a little harder to get through. The movie can get really slow at times when it is focusing on the family drama and not on trying to stop the monsters. It has quite a bit of action and fanservice referencing the previous monster movies. For example, one of the monster’s roars is sampled from a previous monster movie back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but overall it was a bit of a flop in the box office. For your average moviegoer, it can be a bit boring, but for the fans who were looking forward to this movie it probably satisfied. One of the problems with this movie is that it’s a little contradictory because the characters make abundantly it clear that they can track Godzilla then for a sixth of the plot Monarch complains that they can’t track him, and it is a little infuriating at times after they say they can track him. Despite this, it does deserve some credit for taking things from the previous movies in the monsterverse (the MCU of monster movies) and applying them and keeping the story between the three movies more consistent. This movie also has amazing SFX and deserves some props, but at the end of the day, this movie gets about a 6.5/10.